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Saturday, November 14, 2009

Grey gang [On Bushtit Day].

It's a grey day, a calm amid a seemingly endless series of storms, and bushtits are roaming around the neighbourhood in large, amoeboid gangs, but being so tiny, opposed to say, Snow Geese, remain below almost everyone's radar. No one is writing the newspaper to complain.

They are everywhere and nowhere, thus a challenge to photograph. They're like blowing leaves or flying ash. Even when they land they squirm around, often dangling upside-down. Probably the easiest way to get a picture is to stake out a suet feeder. [Coincidentally, that link is from exactly a year ago. November 14 is Bushtit Day!] But it would be nice to frame them in a more more natural setting. The birds in the pictures were plucking something (insect eggs? tiny galls?) from apple leaves.

Affronted female.

Females have pale irises. Those of males are dark.

How much of their lives do they spend hanging upside down? You have to be tiny to do it so often, otherwise you would pass out and fall from your twig.

I'm relatively new to this blog, so I'm still playing catch up with the old posts. I have to say "Winter Bushtits are like the Borg--many bodies, one brain" really cracked me up! Bushtits are lovely - they periodically blow through my mother's lilac tree during the summer.